They arrived at the Anne Frank House, which James had somehow never visited before. A lifetime spent at war memorials and visits to refugee camps had steeled him against showing too much emotion in public, but it was hard for him to stand in the room that had been hers and see the pictures of movie stars she'd pasted to the wall--innocent pleasures, the dreams of a girl just old enough to have crushes and aspire to glamour.
He would have to tell Ben about that, about the way the film stars on her wall got to him more than anything else--
But would Ben be there to tell?
James kept forgetting that. No, not forgetting. It was impossible for him to forget the pain that kept ripping him up inside. But he couldn't seem to adjust his thinking to accept that someday soon, Ben might not be there to talk to. Already it seemed as if his life only half existed until he'd told it to Ben.
***
Two days until James's return, and Ben still didn't know whether he'd be at Clarence House when James got back. Thus far he hadn't asked security to take him to his place in Islington; he hadn't gone out at all, even allowing Glover to take the dogs for their walks.
Come midmorning, the most constructive thing Ben had done was tug on a T-shirt and sweatpants before pulling up old episodes of Top Gear on his laptop.
As Jeremy Clarkson drove a MINI Cooper across India, though, the door to the private suite swung open.
Ben startled. By now he knew when the servants were likely to appear and when they weren't, and this was the latter. Besides, he'd asked not to be disturbed. His astonishment only grew when he saw who it was. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I," said Lady Cassandra Roxburgh, "am taking you to lunch."
They stared at each other. She wore a pale pink Chanel pantsuit and enormous sunglasses pushed up on her head; he looked like a man who had neither dressed nor bathed in two days, which was precisely what he was. Ben thought bemusedly that it was as though they'd been handed different scripts.
"Can you just walk in here like this?" he said. "Doesn't the palace have security?"
Cassandra folded her arms across her chest. "James gave standing orders years ago that I was to be given full freedom of the palace. Every royal order is followed faithfully unless and until the royal person in question lifts it, which James hasn't gotten around to yet. In other words, ducks, your house is my house, and I've come to my house to get you off the damned sofa."
"I appreciate the thought," he lied politely, "but I'm not going out today."
She raised an eyebrow. "What, is your schedule too full up with all the body odor and self-pity?"
Ben stood up. "You should go."
"I'm not walking out of here without you," Cassandra replied, "and at least half a dozen tabloid photographers outside saw me coming in. They'll wait there until I emerge, whether that's half an hour from now or two days--and I can wait two days, believe me. I've my own room here, remember? So unless you want tomorrow's tabloid headlines to turn into frenzied speculation about whether you and I are shagging each other behind James's back, I suggest you pull yourself together."
God damn the woman! With a sigh, Ben turned toward his room. "I need to shower."
"I should say you do," Cassandra said behind him. "Don your best."
He showered, shaved, and put on the good suit again. The hot water and steam from the shower made him temporarily light-headed, and Ben realized he hadn't eaten breakfast. Yesterday he'd skipped lunch, more or less. Getting a proper meal--well, aside from the company, he wouldn't mind it.
As he and Cassandra walked toward the door that would lead to the drive, she said, "I like my driver, but I don't trust him absolutely. In the car, we should chitchat about something completely innocuous. The weather, say. We can indulge in the age-old English pastime of being surprised by the ghastly weather."
It was rather gray out. "Fine."
"We'll be dining in a private room at the restaurant--Spencer will meet us there, by the way. So once we three are seated, we can more or less converse normally, except when the waiters appear. On the way into and out of the restaurant, though, you and I will be seen and overheard. Every syllable will be reported. On the way in, I'll rave about how good the food is. Pretend to be fascinated. On the way out, you can tell me how right I was." Cassandra suddenly smiled. "And I am right about the food, incidentally."
"You're very practiced at this."
"Are you just now noticing that?" They were strolling out toward the car now, and her driver appeared to open the door for them. As he did so, Cassandra turned to Ben and said, "Doesn't look like a very sunny day, does it?"
"You never know." Ben took up the game in turn. "Sometimes the sunshine will burn it off after a cloudy morning."
They played it Cassandra's way the entire trip.
Ben hadn't been in public without James since before the coming-out, not counting his job when he'd had it. Even a restaurant seemed strange and new at this point, though this one was so posh Ben would have felt out of place no matter when he'd first visited. As they strolled across cream-colored rugs, past long skinny mirrors and tables full of wide-eyed, murmuring guests, Cassandra blithely said, "You've heard me raving about the lobster bisque, I know, but the vichyssoise! Just as brilliant."
"I can't wait to try it," Ben said, wearing the most innocuous smile he could manage.
Upon their arrival in their private room they found Spencer Kennedy waiting for them, at which point things became markedly less awkward. Spencer turned out to be witty and engagingly blunt. When Ben asked him about the telecom industry, the conversation quickly went from the polite-and-general to the intensely detailed. Ben had done some research on Chinese and Korean telecom companies abandoning the West as a source of future profits, turning totally toward Asia as the number-one growth market; this turned out to be something Spencer was intensely interested in, weighing whether or not to try the Asian markets as an outsider.
For the most part, Cassandra simply listened and nodded, save for a handful of questions sharp enough to reveal her intelligence. Yet she remained content to listen more than speak--until the conversation took another turn toward sport, at which point Ben was astonished to see just how violently a polished aristocrat in Chanel could swear when talking about bad referee calls.
By the time the three of them were walking out, Ben was in a genuinely good mood. "You were right about this restaurant," he said on cue as they went back through the crowd. Cassandra gave him a grin, and just like that, it was a joke they were both in on.
Spencer went back to his office. Cassandra returned to Clarence House with Ben, claiming, "I do so long to spend some time with Happy and Glo. Greedy little beasts."
Once they were alone in the private suite again, and Cassandra was cheerfully allowing her designer suit to be shed on by two corgis, Ben said, "Thanks. For lunch, I mean. I needed to get out."
"Indeed you did, and you do." Her eyes flickered up to his, but only for a moment. "James has told me you're unsure about--well, this life. Not that I really needed him to tell me so. It's obvious."
Ben sighed. "I don't see how you put up with this for years."
"I played a role, and I played it well. Remember how they all called me the pantomime dame? If you're going to stay with James, you're going to have to create your own role. You want him to be king? Well, then, time to start acting like a king's consort."
"It's a very fake way to live."
Cassandra snorted in a very unladylike way. "Oh, yes, and everyone else walks around being utterly sincere every moment of every day. Hardly. All of us engage in some degree of artifice, even if it's just putting on makeup or answering the question of how we are with 'Fine, thanks.' The few people who don't are usually mentally ill; I'm being entirely factual about that. Armoring ourselves against the world--it's the first step toward psychological health. Your position just requires a great deal more armor than most."
Ben weighed her words. He knew she wasn't wrong, but he also
knew she was oversimplifying things greatly. "I don't know that it's as easy as that."
"Neither do I. After all, I fucked it up well enough."
After a moment, he dared to ask, "Why do you care? I'd think you'd be rushing to set James up with someone more suitable, not keep me around."
"I love James. That's all there is to it. What he wants, I want for him, even if that's an ill-tempered foreigner who roots for all the wrong football clubs."
Ben had drunk a glass of wine with lunch, which helped make that amusing instead of offensive. "If that was the worst the tabloids said about me, I'd count myself lucky."
"No such good fortune for you. Ben, you must understand--the people of Great Britain love James. They loved him when he was a smudge on a sonogram. They loved him when he made his first balcony appearance at eighteen months and waved to the crowds with both arms. No, they're not thrilled he's gay, but they've loved him too much and too long to turn on him now. So the anger they feel about their thwarted expectations must go somewhere. It goes straight to the dashing foreigner with the murky past who seems to have corrupted their perfect prince. You're the temptation. The homme fatal. You, they're ready to hate. So stop giving them so much fuel for the fire, would you?"
"You didn't mind fueling their hate when you were pretending to be his girlfriend."
"I couldn't help it, really. Not without staying a virgin forever, and I'm sorry, as much as I love James, there are limits."
"He says sometimes he tried to convince you to marry him, but you never considered it."
"Oh, I considered it," Cassandra replied, startling Ben. "Sometimes very seriously, and especially after a couple of my worst breakups. But I knew if I ever said anything to James, he would want to act on it right away. So I refused to speak unless I was certain, which thank God I never was."
"You really would've married a gay man?"
She shrugged. "I would have married my best friend. James would have allowed me to date on the side, were I discreet about it, and vice versa. We could've had children, either through reproductive technology or old-fashioned determination--though in that case, he would've been the one lying back and thinking of England! And I've always believed James would be a wonderful father. My firstborn child would have become monarch, and the others would have been as physically and economically secure as it is possible for children to be. People have made worse bargains."
It was all so clear, so vivid, that Ben felt surprised it hadn't come to pass. Had James told Ben that was his plan in the earliest days of their relationship, Ben would have cynically accepted it. He might have taken a place in the shadows of James's life, bordered by the edges of the bed they shared, while never realizing how much more they could be. "But you waited for Spencer."
"He's marvelous, isn't he?" Cassandra's grin was infectious.
"He is," Ben agreed, "and you're glad you chose not to live a lie."
"You could look at it that way, but I don't. As I see it, I chose real love."
He nodded, accepting that. Yet Ben knew, perhaps better than Cassandra did, the limits of what love could provide.
She turned brisk. "All right. That's enough agony-aunt advice from me. I've put a good meal in you and made sure you won't smell to high heaven when James gets home. The rest is up to you two."
She smooched the corgis on their noses, collected her designer bag, and began to go. As she reached the door, Ben said, "Cassandra?"
"Hmm?"
How should he say it? "You're all right, really."
"No shit," Cassandra replied, and out she went.
***
James went through all his official duties in the Netherlands, from touring water-pumping stations to waltzing with the queen, with half of his mind somewhere else.
For him it was never a question of whether he wanted to go on with Ben. He did, desperately. But he knew his task wasn't as simple as coming home and repeating vows of love. If he and Ben were to make this work, they had to find a more constructive way of going on together, both as partners to each other and as figures in the public eye.
And if Ben had decided he wanted out, then James had to find a graceful way to accept that.
Ben's departure would devastate him. It might kill something inside him forever. But James had never forgotten what he'd said on that incredible night when Ben had first sworn to stand by his side: I love you enough to let you go. It would be the greatest act of love in James's life, and he was determined to carry through with it if he must, and with kindness and understanding. Yet every beat of his heart told him Fight for him, fight for Ben, you have to fight this. The war in his heart was love versus love.
James didn't call. They had mutually decided before the trip that it would be better to take these few days for reflection and only talk again at the end. In some ways that made the suspense hellish. Still, James figured that if Ben had moved back into his Islington flat lock, stock, and barrel, some glimmer of it would show up in the tabloids. No such headlines appeared, which gave him something to hang on to.
His private plane was unable to take off for hours after its scheduled departure due to inclement weather. This meant that James arrived back at Clarence House in the dead of night. He instructed Glover and Paulson to take his things up and deal with them the next morning, "so as not to disturb Mr. Dahan." James said all this not knowing whether Ben was even upstairs.
The only item James took with him was one of the gifts he'd been given by a Dutch well-wisher. Invariably he received dozens of stuffed toys and banners and pins and whatnot, the vast majority of which he donated to children's hospitals. This, however, he had kept: a beautiful, red-orange tulip in a ceramic pot.
Ben's next book was about tulips, in part. So James would give this to Ben as a symbol of James's belief in Ben's future, whether with him or on his own. Even if Ben wanted to end things, even if he'd already taken most of his things back to the Islington flat, James would give him this one last gift. He thought he understood Ben well enough to know that Ben would keep the plant thriving no matter what.
As James went upstairs, ceramic pot in both hands, he tried to work out the algebra of their situation. If Ben was sitting up waiting for him, that was probably good. If Ben had gone to sleep in his bed, that was--uncertain. He might be willing to try and work things out, or he might simply be saving a difficult conversation for the morning. If Ben wasn't present, instead spending the night of James's homecoming at his place in Islington, that was pretty well the kiss of death.
James entered the private suite. Ben wasn't sitting up waiting for him.
His heart sank, but James kept talking himself through it. All right. You knew this might be coming. Steady on.
Desperately he longed to go to Ben's room and see if Ben were sleeping there, or whether everything had been removed. But James told himself to respect Ben's rest. The answer wouldn't change if he waited until tomorrow morning, so he should just wait.
A lump in his throat, James set down the tulip and went to his own room. He opened the door and was just about to flick on the light when he realized Ben was lying in his bed, waiting for him there. That was the best sign of all.
Ben propped himself up, groggy. "James?"
James didn't so much as kick off his shoes. Instead he simply crawled atop the bed and atop Ben, embracing him as best he could with the covers in the way. Ben hugged James back, and for a while they simply lay there, beyond words, comforting each other.
When James thought he could speak again, he said, "I was so scared you wouldn't be here."
"I nearly wasn't. But Cassandra spoke with me."
"You spoke with Cass?" Of your own free will? James had glimpsed one online headline suggesting that Cass and Ben had hit the town together but hadn't even read the story, assuming it to be pure invention.
"It's not like she talked me into staying. But she made me think." Ben stroked one hand through James's hair. "No, I don't like this life. Still, I haven't given it a chance,
not really. I have to try to live like--like it's forever. The habits we got into when I was your secret on the side, they don't help us any more. I have to find out what it would be like to do this forever, really find out, before I can make any decisions."
That meant Ben still wasn't entirely committed to taking this on permanently, but James could accept that. Really, this was the conversation they should have had that night when Ben agreed to come out alongside him. This might not be their end, but at least it was a proper beginning.
"Is that all right?" Ben said. "My still not knowing?"
"Your giving it a real chance is the most I could ever ask for. And I've got to make some changes too. I realize that." James's head rested alongside Ben's on the pillow. "We have to be more open with each other. More honest. I think we try to spare each other's feelings, but it just sets up more misunderstandings."
"You're right. It doesn't come naturally to me--not having limits." Ben sighed heavily. "I think I should warn you about a steep learning curve ahead."
"For both of us. I've never felt free to say exactly what I thought, not even with you. But I'll learn. We'll learn together." James took a moment, then added, "Also I have to be more proactive about creating a niche for you within The Firm."
Ben took a deep breath. Obviously he wasn't thrilled about the idea of trying to fit into the royal establishment, but James could tell that he finally saw the necessity of it.
"Maybe we can find a way yet."
Gently Ben took James's hand and lifted it to his lips for a kiss. He could be so gentle sometimes, so unexpectedly tender. As vulnerable and uncertain as this moment was, James thought he wouldn't have traded it for anything. This was the foundation of their chance to build a happy life. They lay in the semidarkness, James still atop the covers and fully dressed, yet as intimately together as they'd ever been while making love.
James said, "I brought you a flower."
"What?" Ben's smile was incredulous. "You brought me flowers?"
"A flower. Singular. A tulip, like the ones you're writing about."
Ben understood immediately what it meant; James had known he would. "Thank you."
"Shall I go get it for you?"
But Ben simply hugged him tighter. "I can see it in the morning. Stay here."